


Sometimes

by nereid



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-12
Updated: 2014-05-12
Packaged: 2018-01-24 12:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1604630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/pseuds/nereid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thinks of Lily the most. Nothing important, like Lily's the best person I know, or Lily's the hottest woman I know. He thinks, Lily smiled at me yesterday, or I touched Lily's fingers when she passed me a beer yesterday at McClaren's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes

It's something like this: sometimes, when he forgets to close the windows in his bedroom and it's cold, and he's too lazy to get up and close them, but he can't sleep, because he's cold, sometimes when that happens, he thinks. 

 

Thinks about whatever, really. How Ted told a funny joke a few days ago, how Robin got so drunk yesterday she couldn't make it back to her own place and instead slept on Marshall and Lily's couch, how Marshall's scarily tall occasionally, but not always. 

 

He thinks of Lily the most. Nothing important, like _Lily's the best person I know_ , or _Lily's the hottest woman I know_. He thinks, _Lily smiled at me yesterday_ , or _I touched Lily's fingers when she passed me a beer yesterday at McClaren's_. Nothing about his thoughts is important. 

 

And still.

 

He doesn't like thinking about her, doesn't even think he chooses to think about her. It's more like this - she chooses him, over and over again. There's the real Lily and there's the Lily in his head, and the Lily in his head chooses when he thinks about her, and is also sometimes to blame for how he behaves around the real Lily. 

 

(Who'd ever think they'd see Barney Stinson blush? He does, people just don't notice.)

 

It's not love, of course it's not. Marshall and Lily, that's love, and Ted and Robin, that used to be love, and this thing, this monstrous thing that makes him unable to sleep, it's not love, because it can't be. 

 

(That's a lie. It's impossible not to love Lily Aldrin.)

 

It's just, sometimes he looks at her. It's ok, because she's a friend, and you get to talk to your friends and look at them because it's necessary to look at your friends to be able to talk to them, but sometimes he looks at her more than that. More than he should.

 

And not in the Barney-Stinson, overly-casual-not-at-all-important kind of way, like when she bends over to pick something up or when she leans over and shows more than would be smart. Those are things he can deal with. Looking at her when she smiles, just because she has a pretty smile, and listening to her talk and losing track of the conversation because he's focusing on her lips, that's not familiar territory. That should never be familiar territory. 

 

(There's one book in the entire world that Barney believes in. The Bro Code is his Bible and his Quran and this, this violates the Bro Code in about 47 different ways. He knows, because he counted.)

 

It's something like this: sometimes, when he forgets to close the windows in his bedroom and it's cold, and he's too lazy to get up and close them, but he can't sleep, because he's cold, sometimes when that happens, he thinks about Lily Aldrin, and he thinks about love, and the two are the same.


End file.
